Birth Story

As most of you know I have been on Terbutaline and Procardia to stop contractions since I was about 24 weeks pregnant. I would still have contractions, but they would usually come and go. A week before I had Mattix I told my Dr that I felt the way I did about a week before I had Vella and that I should get the steroid shot for the baby's lungs and my Dr told me that dr's don't usually give them after 34 weeks. I spoke with the hospital and they said it depended on the Dr, but some Dr's will order the shot to be given up until 36 weeks. So I am kinda bummed that my Dr didn't take it seriously. I had another Dr appointment the day before I had him, and I was 3
cm dilated and almost fully effaced. My blood pressure was high, so they sent me to the hospital to have blood work done. When I got to the hospital my blood pressure was normal, so they did the work faster than they normally would have, but they were hesitant about letting me leave because I was having contractions on the monitor. I have contractions all the time, so I didn't think anything of it and told them that was a normal thing for me. So I went home and later that evening Greg and I watched a movie and went to bed. I woke up around 1:00 a.m. in the middle of a crampy kind of contraction. I wasn't all the way awake and then I felt some fluid leaking down there. I was thinking, "Oh no!" .. I have heard that it is a fairly common thing for women who are pregnant to have a trickle of pee here and there, and I thought I must have been too asleep to get up and go to the bathroom or something! I actually felt kind of embarrassed and was wondering what Greg would think. And then there was a huge gush. I woke Greg up and told him my water broke and that I needed a towel or something so I didn't get water everywhere when I stood up. It took him a little while to wake up all the way and understand what was going on. Haha, it still makes me laugh....after I told him that he jumped out of bed and was picking up pillows and blankets from the bed like he was looking under them for something. Then he was picking up some of my clothes from the floor and he had my church skirt in his hand and I told him to hand that to me. So he did and when I stood up there was another gush! Amniotic fluid was everywhere!!!! When my water broke with Vella it was a small gush and then it just trickled out. So having my water break that way was pretty unexpected and funny. We packed a few things for the hospital, since idiot me never packed a hospital bag, and we took Vella over to John and Cindy's. I called the hospital and let them know I was coming when we were driving over. When we got there the nurse took us in a room and said that she would try and get my contractions to stop..LOL..I told her that my water broke and she had me lay down so she could do that test with the ph strip to see if my water broke. She was like hmm are you sure your water broke because you're pretty dry down there. I was like ummm ya, I don't know what else that would have been! So she checked to see how dilated I was and she could feel the baby's head in my pelvis and I was dilated to an 8. A few minutes later nurses were rushing around setting up the room for delivery. Not long after that I was fully dilated and ready to push, but I was having killer back labor. The only time my back wasn't killing me was when I was standing up, leaning forward or sitting up, and the baby's heart rate would drop unless I was laying flat on my back. Laying flat on my back would hurt the most and I couldn't control the muscles in my stomach I needed to push with. There were two dr's on call and there were two other women having there baby's, so they gave me an intrathecal and told me to not push until a doctor came back. The intrathecal was nice because It took away my back pain, but I could still feel my contractions and what my body was doing. So I waited for about an hour, all in which I could feel the baby's head and was trying my best to not push! I started having a hard contraction and it felt like he was going to come out, so I called the nurses and the Dr came. Two pushes and he was out! Greg cut his cord and then was weighed and taken to the NICU. I'll do a post about how he is doing soon! My labor and delivery was fairly simple other than the back labor. I wasn't in pain until I was fully dialated and I delivered four hours after my water broke. It would have been sooner if I didn't have to wait to push him out!